Chap 7 MexicoCY.
CHAPTER 7
C O N S E RV I N G C R I T I C A L
C O A S TA L E C O S Y S T E M S
IN MEXICO:
C A PA C I T Y B U I L D I N G A N D S T R AT E G I C
I N N O VAT I O N F O R T H E S U S TA I N A B L E
D E V E L O P M E N T O F C O A S TA L
COMMUNITIES AND REGIONS
Donald D. Robadue, Jr.
Pamela Rubinoff
INTRODUCTION
The seven-year (1996 – 2003) program Conserving Critical Coastal
Ecosystems in Mexico (C3EM) was the third country program undertaken during CRMP II. It evolved within a context of rapid development in
Mexico’s coastal growth centers, a strong response to this development
from Mexican and international conservation communities, and important efforts in the 1990s to upgrade Mexico’s institutional framework for
environmental management. During this period, the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the conservation community in
Mexico focused primarily on conserving biodiversity and implementing
management plans for formally established protected areas.
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Mexico
Showing the CRMP field sites
USA
USA
MEXICO
SOUTH
AMERICA
Bahía Santa María
Gulf of
California
La Paz
MEXICO
GULF OF
MEXICO
Mexico City
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Costa Maya
Chetumal Bay
and Xcalak
Marine Park
C3EM has been implemented by the Coastal Resources Center (CRC) at
the University of Rhode Island (URI) through a partnership with two
Mexican non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—Amigos de Sian
Ka’an (ASK) and Conservation International/Mexico (CIMEX)—and a
Mexican state university, the University of Quintana Roo (UQROO). The
C3EM program operates in two coastal regions—the southern portion of
the state of Quintana Roo on the east coast and the Gulf of California. In
both regions, the project’s partner organizations lead local conservation
and management efforts.
The opportunity for CRC to work on integrated coastal management
(ICM) in Mexico emerged in 1995. It began when CRC staff completed
the design of a World Bank project to initiate ICM programs on the west
coast in Chiapas, Veracruz and Nayarit to complement investments in
environmentally sound aquaculture. That same year, CRC was asked by
USAID’s Mexico mission to help prepare a much smaller-scale proposal
for the Summit of the Americas initiative of the U.S. State Department to
assist the mission’s conservation partners in Mexico. Although the World
Bank program was eventually cancelled, its design had a significant
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influence upon the USAID initiative, which promoted a participatory
approach to preparing coastal management plans, built upon existing
environmental management tools and featured collaboration with universities and NGOs. The agenda laid out in the World Bank project
design remains relevant a decade later as CRC works to promote aquaculture good practices in Sinaloa, CIMEX works in Nayarit’s Marismas
Nacionales, and USAID targets watersheds and lagoons in Chiapas and
Veracruz.
The interconnectedness of events and agendas is an important element
of the C3EM story. This chapter highlights the context of resource management in Mexico in the 1990s, the successes and challenges facing
C3EM during its implementation from 1996 - 2003, and the results and
lessons learned as of the project close in September 2003.
THE GOVERNANCE CONTEXT FOR COASTAL MANAGEMENT IN
MEXICO
A mix of global, national and local issues in the target regions of the east
and west coasts of Mexico helped shape the design of the C3EM.
National environmental policy and leadership was galvanized in Mexico
by the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and
Development and by Mexico’s adoption in 1988 of its General
Environmental Protection Law. Next, the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
set the stage for Mexico’s 1995 - 2000 environmental program, prepared
by the newly created super-agency SEMARNAP (now SEMARNAT,
Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales—the Environment
Secretariat of Mexico). This marked a period of strong leadership and
the energetic application of such conservation and environmental management tools as protected areas and marine parks, environmental plans
for coastal areas, and enforcement of environmental laws. Important
new measures included the creation of the Mexican Nature Trust (Fondo
Mexicana para la Conservación y Natureleza). This fund supports a variety of site-based conservation projects and has transformed “paper
parks”—i.e. parks that exist on paper but are largely non-functional—
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into an effective conservation tool. The Nature Trust is currently capitalized at about US $58 million, with contributions from the Global
Environmental Facility, the Government of Mexico, USAID and several
private foundations.
In the mid-1990s, coastal management issues were on the national agenda. The environmental agenda included in President Ernesto Zedillo’s
six-year plan (1994 - 2000) called for addressing key problems in the federal coastal zone—a 20-meter-wide strip above the high water mark—
including the need to clarify ownership and establish management
responsibilities along the Mexican coastline. New legislation guided federal agencies in the management of fisheries, wildlife, forests and the
federal coastal zone. Mexico’s coastal zone management program has
subsequently focused on settling title disputes and collecting revenues
from concessions while other federal ministries have worked with their
counterparts at the state level to oversee human settlements, urban planning, navigation, ports and tourism.
About 13.4 million people reside in the coastal region, which spans
approximately 35,000 kilometers and includes 166 municipalities in 17
states. Since 1921, Mexico had a highly centralized government under
the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary
Party), which held power for 80 years. The elections of 2000 marked a
major political transition as the presidency shifted to the Partido Acción
Nacional (National Action Party). Since this change in government,
Mexico’s environmental programs have promoted decentralization and
granted state and municipal agencies greater authority and decisionmaking power. The change has sparked an increasingly vocal struggle over
revenue sharing between the federal government and the states. It has
also created decentralized environmental programs in all three layers
(federal, state and municipal) of government.
In 2003, most coastal states have their own counterparts to the federal
agencies. Environmental affairs and urban development are frequently
combined at the state level. Yet in 1995, at the outset of C3EM, there was
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little coordination or integration either among sectors or among federalstate-municipal lines of command. The struggle among layers of government to create effective decentralization reflects the difficulties of internal reform. However, providing a strong institutional foundation is an
essential precondition for advancing ICM in Mexico.
Mexico has acknowledged the need to expand beyond the federal zone
and establish an ICM framework. In 2000, the National Ecology Institute
published a series of reports that summarized environmental progress
under the Zedillo administration and set out agendas for the future. The
recommendations outlined in the reports reflect a tacit understanding of
the issues that have slowed the country’s attempts at sustainable coastal
development. The C3EM is, in and of itself, a manifestation of the recommendation to “draw more fully on the opportunities for international
cooperation in coastal management.”
KEY COASTAL BIODIVERSITY ISSUES FACING MEXICO IN THE MID1990S
Establishing viable international markets for fisheries products (including farmed shrimp) and building market share in the global tourism
industry are key economic objectives for Mexico. Both industries create
important forces that are changing Mexico’s coasts. USAID, in its 1998 –
2006 biodiversity conservation strategy, promoted ICM as an approach
that could work in concert with its conservation strategies to address the
issues raised by these development pressures.
Tourism
The growth and popularity of Cancun as a vacation resort, and now the
largest city in the state of Quintana Roo, proved that tourism could be
an important engine for economic development. It provides a physical
model for tourism development—one with massive, all-inclusive resort
hotels—as well as a financial model, where initial investments have
ignited a long period of hotel construction and associated activities.
Within just 25 years, the once sleepy village of Cancun has been transformed into a premier resort city of over 300,000 residents and spawned
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a 150-kilometer tourism corridor, the Riviera Maya. This has set the
stage for new plans for a tourism investment program for the southern
Costa Maya—the same region where USAID’s program has promoted
more sustainable forms of coastal management and growth.
Tourism development has not come without costs. While Quintana Roo
captures approximately one-third of Mexico’s total tourism income, economic success is difficult to measure and prompts difficult questions.
Are the benefits distributed fairly to communities and local entrepreneurs alike? To what extent do benefits remain in Mexico as opposed to
being sent abroad to tour companies and international hotel chains?
How are ecosystem services compromised by such intense coastal development and use? The National Tourism Promotion Fund (FONATUR), is
proud of its role in jump-starting the tourism development in Cancun’s
beach zone and the Riviera Maya. However, government and citizens
are now working together to address the uncontrolled secondary
impacts of this growth, and address problems in implementing the local
Environmental Land Management Plan that was adopted in 1994 after
more than 20,000 rooms had been constructed and visitor arrivals had
reached two million per year.
Today, FONATUR continues to promote mass tourism to destinations
throughout Mexico’s coastal zone but it is now promoting a low-impact
alternative to the Cancun style of development. The newest proposal for
the Gulf of California encourages a regional approach to development—
26 marina sites located along a “Nautical Route.” FONATUR’s master
plan for Quintana Roo’s southern Costa Maya calls for a smaller 7,000room tourism destination tied to a cruise ship port. It is important to
note that these and other projects are now being negotiated with politicians, community groups and environmental organizations, who together are helping define a trajectory for sustainable tourism.
Fisheries and aquaculture
A motivating factor for creating marine protected areas in Mexico has
been declining fisheries and biodiversity. Whether it is industrial trawl-
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ing of shrimp in marine waters or increased fishing pressure on coral
reefs and lagoons by artisanal fishers, conflicts are increasing and populations of fish and shellfish are declining. Artisanal fisheries have both
social significance and political influence in the region. There are well
over 11,000 boats in the Sinaloa region alone. Unfortunately there are
few or no regulations on the species harvested.
Economic pressures for growth in aquaculture can be clearly seen in the
Gulf of California, where 16 of the 20 major coastal lagoon ecosystems
have been surveyed for shrimp aquaculture. About 35,700 hectares of
ponds have already been built and there is a potential for 180,000
hectares more. Such a build-out would threaten these coastal ecosystems, which have important wild shrimp fisheries, internationally significant wetlands, and provide important habitats for migrating shore birds
and ducks.
Mexico’s strong concern for the health and good management of its bays
and lagoons is reflected in its Comprehensive Fisheries Policy (Carta
Nacional de Pesca, the National Map of Fisheries Policies) which includes
a characterization, issue diagnosis and recommended actions for all of
Mexico’s important embayments. Nevertheless, weak enforcement and
bureaucratic processes have made management of these areas a
challenge.
Increases in economic investment in the fisheries and tourism sectors
are deeply intertwined with demographic and environmental issues
affecting quality of life in coastal regions. Mexico is using ICM tools to
help address management by integrating environment, economy, and
development. While advances are being made by addressing such
resource management issues, the forces of internal and external change
(globalization) demand major policy shifts and require that political
decisions be made at larger scales.
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PROJECT DESIGN AND OPERATION
While the CRMP II initiatives in Tanzania and Indonesia and the CRMP I
pilot sites in Ecuador, Thailand and Sri Lanka were all government-led
partnerships that addressed ICM at the national level, the C3EM project
was directed at strengthening NGO and university institutions in targeted bio-geographic regions of Mexico. The reason for this focus was simple: Mexican law is sufficient to meet the challenges and its key institutions are already in place. The need is for an increased level of public
participation and sound implementation. Place-based efforts at the community, municipal and bio-regional levels—efforts with high levels of
participation and co-management—are one means for accomplishing
this.
In its first two years, the C3EM was funded at US $2.7 million to achieve
its four key objectives. In the project’s third through fifth years, USAID
increased the scope of work to include the design and oversight of a
field station to match Japanese Embassy funding of the facility in
Mahahual in the state of Quintana Roo. All C3EM partners have a successful history of fundraising and securing institutional funds to match
project income. From the start, the team agreed to seek complementary
projects that would substantially increase the work that could be supported through USAID funding. These efforts generated US $1 million
on each coast.
As an element of the USAID Mexico biodiversity portfolio, C3EM’s purpose was to build the capacity of selected Mexican institutions to effectively support citizen efforts to address the multi-faceted issues affecting
coastal resource condition and use. USAID’s priority in 1996 was to
bring an integrated approach to what it saw as a set of isolated coastal
conservation projects. While Mexico has an enviable legal and administrative framework for environmental policy, there was a growing gap
between stated policy and actual practice. Working through existing
NGOs previously funded by USAID provided a platform to advance
coastal resource governance through strategic points of entry rather than
through a comprehensive national program. Often, small practical
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demonstrations of coordination, cooperation and co-management can
generate the hope and self-confidence needed to build demand for and
capability to carry out programs of greater scope and influence.
The C3EM objectives were to:
1. Make progress in coastal management in areas adjacent to biodiversity conservation sites.
C3EM worked in two ecologically important areas to demonstrate
how coastal management could help conserve critical coastal ecosystems and build NGO and university partner capacity to contribute to
a broader coastal management agenda. The C3EM sites were Xcalak
and its associated coral reef ecosystem within the Meso-American
Reef System; and Bahía Santa María in Sinaloa, a high-priority
coastal wetland ecosystem in the Gulf of California.
2. Promote voluntary measures to mitigate the impacts of development.
C3EM acknowledged that most change in coastal resource use would
need to be voluntary and driven by incentives for individuals and
developers to adjust their activities. Toward this end, the project, in
partnership with private and public stakeholders, focused on developing and applying good practices for tourism and mariculture—
practices that would reduce environmental impacts, promote sustainable businesses and enhance the local distribution of benefits.
3. Improve coastal governance.
The C3EM project addressed the coastal policies affecting the ecosystems of Costa Maya, Chetumal (Quintana Roo), and the Gulf of
California. The project contributed to the state-level coastal land use
ordinances that are Mexico’s primary tool for establishing use priorities in geographic areas. The objective was to strengthen institutions
and policies within the targeted regions and thereby increase the
prospects of success in these strategically selected sites—and then to
replicate this process throughout the region. The C3EM program
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design emphasized participatory methods to establish co-management schemes and sought opportunities to create inter-sectoral coordination mechanisms.
4. Increase local and regional capability to utilize ICM principles and
practices.
C3EM worked to build the capacity of program partners to work
successfully with a diverse group of stakeholders at the community
and regional levels to support the first three objectives. The project
recognized that in order for participatory processes, coastal planning
and decisionmaking, or the design and adoption of good practices to
succeed, all three layers of Mexican government—local, regional, and
national—had to be actively engaged.
Two conditions sparked the selection of Xcalak and Costa Maya as sites
requiring “improved management.” One was the announcement by government of plans to develop tourism along the coast of this region.
Another was the request from community members to create a marine
park and promote eco-tourism. The C3EM goal was to help Xcalak and
the Costa Maya as a whole to move from a threatened environmental
status to one in which ecosystem quality was healthy and coastal management capability was robust. To accomplish this, C3EM proposed
using a learning-based approach.
In both the Costa Maya and Gulf of California sites, measurement of
progress towards improved management was the main indicator reported annually to USAID. Advances in site management were tracked by a
scorecard, adapted in part from the Mexico Parks in Peril program and
the Regional Environmental Program for Central America (PROARCA).
This scorecard mirrored the ICM policy cycle. (See Chapter 1.)
Step 1: Local problems identified and a shared vision prepared
Step 2: Local action plans and strategy initiated
Step 3: Local action plan approved
Step 4: Local action plans implemented
Step 5: Evaluation (addressing performance gaps) conducted
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Other indicators tracked specific changes in behavior in coastal resource
use and progress in policy and capacity development.
The following pages share insights into C3EM strategies to achieve its
goals and highlight both its successful and less successful efforts. Seven
years of collaboration to improve Mexico’s evolving ecosystem and land
use governance system have provided CRMP II and its partners with a
broader understanding of both the bottlenecks and the opportunities for
reform, progress and growth of ICM as an important tool for sustainable
development.
STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING RESULTS
The intended strategies for each result of the C3EM program describe the
initial choices on direction and use of project resources. Some of these
choices changed during the course of the program in reaction either to
internal changes in the project and its partners, or to external changes in
the issues and opportunities in the program areas. This reflects the learning-based approach that characterized the CRMP.
Strategies for formally adopting coastal management plans and selecting
implementation actions along southern Xcalak Peninsula and Bahía Santa
María
In both Quintana Roo and the Gulf of California, local successes have
helped advance coastal management at all levels. It is the work implemented at the site level that creates concentrated effort and enthusiasm,
and provides tangible evidence of the practical outputs and outcomes
that can result from the investments of time, energy and money that go
into studies, discussion and consensus building. Mexico has a labyrinth
of area plans, impact assessment procedures and regulatory criteria—
none of which converge at the scale of a coastal ecosystem and most of
which have little credibility at the local level. This systems begs for an
alternative approach that can demonstrate and then generate support for
planning methods that cross jurisdictions and that unify stakeholders.
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Such an approach would ensure sustained efforts that transcend
administrations and have sustainable funding and a vibrant constituency.
However, without a focus on what local people perceive as priority
issues and a commitment to participation, otherwise logical and robust
environmental planning can degrade into the tedious formality of
preparing environmental master plans at different scales. For example,
combining bay and land area decisionmaking—an idea only vaguely
referred to in national law—became real and exciting when tested on the
ground in both Quintana Roo and Sinaloa.
Moving from planning to implementation in Mexico means breathing
new life into existing instruments. Currently, municipal and state-adopted environmental ordinances and a federal environmental regulation
system that oversees coastal decisionmaking are Mexico’s principal
coastal environmental management tools. C3EM’s three strategic partners worked at revitalizing these instruments from different
perspectives.
Closing the gap between planning and implementation meant pursuing
practical projects with good chances of producing early and tangible success at various levels. In C3EM, this included implementing specific
problem-solving exercises in villages, experimenting with private enterprises to take advantage of conservation successes, reshaping legal procedures so as to engage resource users, and providing a support network
to working groups. Early actions in Xcalak and Bahía Santa María were
especially effective in building stakeholder confidence and providing a
practical exercise for advancing local management while waiting for formal mechanisms to be put in place.
Strategies for defining low-impact practices for environmentally compatible
coastal development and promoting their use by private developers and
regulatory agencies
C3EM strategic partners initially worked in sites where biodiversity was
the primary concern. As programs on both coasts unfolded, partners also
responded to the need to address social and economic development, and
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the public health dimensions of environmental problems. These added
dimensions were introduced through training events and support for
business planning and supplemental livelihoods. The program has been
diligent in incorporating private sector and community viewpoints on
good conservation practices. It has addressed the incentives and disincentives for implementing policies and good practices.
Strategies for developing policy options for government
Coastal management is a relatively new idea in Mexico. One of its
underlying foundations is the co-management of natural resources and
public goods. In co-management, both government and users of common property resources take responsibility for good decisionmaking and
make credible commitments to carry out these decisions. In Mexico,
however, federal government holds the authority for most decisions on
coastal and marine waters and resources. Nevertheless, co-management
arrangements do work when appropriately staffed, funded and backed
by enforcement agencies and the judicial system.
The best known example of a co-management arrangement is the pioneering work in the 1980s which led to major policy change in tropical
forestry management in Quintana Roo and the establishment of the Sian
Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. Forests held by ejidos (communities that own
land in common) are now managed collaboratively with government
authorities through an array of agreements that leaves management
largely in the hands of the resource owners. This was a dramatic reversal
in federal and state policy toward forest resources—from a situation
where forest concessions were issued top down, to a situation where,
today, ejidos have full control and make consensus-based decisions within the context of a statewide integrated decision process.
As a result, rampant deforestation and uncontrolled expansion of cattle
ranching has been halted. ASK, a C3EM lead partner, played an important role in this process. More recently UQROO has been involved in
implementation and analysis of the co-management arrangements. There
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were both progress and pitfalls in the co-management strategy in forests
and coastal land protection in the biosphere reserve, with periods of
progress interspersed with periods of “one step forward, two steps
back.”
The C3EM program draws much from the spirit and ideas of this
forestry experience. This “inheritance,” however, was not fully recognized or appreciated at the outset of this project as team members and
partners viewed forests and coasts as two separate realms. Nevertheless,
the C3EM program and its partners have encountered and tested a wide
range of these co-management situations, and have promoted making
them a component of Mexico’s ICM “tool box.”
Regional or national levels of government must support local tests of comanagement practices and agreements. This is often referred to as a
“two-track” approach where concurrent efforts occur at local and national levels. However, the C3EM strategy used a different approach. Only
after testing local efforts and as the learning and the team matured did it
scale-up to regional efforts. The hope was that as local efforts were
proven successful, leaders in other local sites would hear about these
and adapt the approach to their own issues. Regional or national governments also began to discover their roles in supporting implementation of
policies and programs through such local action. CRC played an important role in this process as well. Since the projects on the two coasts operated relatively independently from each other, cross-program exchange
was difficult. CRC, however, played a facilitator role serving as a conduit
for ideas and insights between both regions and helping to spread the
word to other sites.
Strategies for improving capacity of the C3EM partners in site management and
low-impact development practices
The sheer size of Mexico’s coastal zone combined with the biodiversity
focus of the USAID Mexico mission created a unique situation and challenge to the CRC Mexico team. With a small budget, C3EM aimed to
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make a difference in some fraction of the 35,000 kilometers of coast. This
challenge was exacerbated by the high cost of doing business in Mexico.
On the positive side, there were a number of encouraging factors.
Mexico has a high level of technical capability within the academic,
research, and NGO communities in its 17 coastal states. Many faculty
and technical staff in civic associations, including CRMP II’s strategic
partners, were trained in the U.S. at the Master’s or Ph.D. level. The
Mexican government is relatively stable. Furthermore, international
donor programs concerned about biodiversity conservation, including
USAID, have invested in building the capacity of civic society in advocacy, effective participation in public policy and decisionmaking, and the
design and implementation of co-management arrangements.
An important part of the C3EM approach was the definition of roles of
the project team members. Most C3EM tasks were integrated into larger
programs initiated and led by CRC’s partners. The partners assumed the
lead role in interactions with local authorities and other groups. For its
part, CRC brought to the C3EM program a broader perspective drawn
from its international contacts and experience. The presence of a respected outside organization such as CRC can help partners overcome the
phenomenon that “no one is a prophet in his own land” by verifying,
validating and reinforcing work which the partners were already well
able to carry out themselves.
At the start of C3EM, all partners had well-trained and technically qualified staff and consultants to help carry out biodiversity conservation.
The tendency in the mid-1990s, however, was to emphasize scientific
and technical expertise over advocacy. Process skills—skills in building
constituencies and in negotiating and implementing successful co-management agreements—however, are essential to ICM and these skills
were weak. Partner organizations recognized that their staff had little
experience working with community groups, the private sector, or
engaging government agencies in a non-adversarial manner. Some had
little experience collaborating with other NGOs or universities. CRMP II
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assisted partners in convening multi-stakeholder panels, committees and
organizations that could lead to establishing ICM programs robust
enough to endure the three-year cycle of staff turnover and political
change at the local level. The USAID annual workplan requirements and
semi-annual reporting became a team-building effort, and a time to periodically assess and adapt the program.
Initial efforts in Quintana Roo did not involve UQROO. This was primarily because UQROO was not an NGO and had no prior relationship
with the USAID mission. Yet, UQROO was attractive as a potential collaborator. It had an emerging role as sponsor of conferences and workshops. It had helped prepare, at the state level, the Costa Maya environmental ordinance. It had an active social forestry program. And, it had a
supportive rector. An agreement was negotiated with the university in
1998 as the second phase of C3EM was being implemented. Adding
UQROO to the C3EM team meant a significant increase in research and
outreach capacity. UQROO was interested in strengthening its own educational curriculum—improving experiential learning for students and
enhancing outreach programs—to encompass coastal management
themes. The university partnership expanded significantly when USAID
formalized its university partnership program between Mexico and the
U.S. This partnership program provided needed resources for UQROO
to establish a Global Information Systems (GIS) Center and initiate a
master’s degree in environmental planning. CRC’s colleagues at URI
worked with UQROO to consolidate university and research institutions
in the Yucatan Peninsula (eight in total) and increase the effectiveness for
data development and distribution. Similarly, URI and UQROO, and
members of a consortium of universities in the Gulf of Mexico and
Caribbean, collaborated in promoting regional ICM programs.
Another important partnership was with the Autonomas University of
Sinaloa (UAS) in the Gulf of California. UAS has provided important
technical and logistical support through its involvement in the Bahía
Santa María program. The university has contributed to a strong technical and extension program for Bahía Santa María. UAS is widely respect-
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ed by participants in the process for its continuing contribution to both
scientific understanding and outreach to bay user groups.
PROGRESS, OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS
The C3EM project has provided Mexico with important positive experiences and innovations in coastal resource management. The national
coastal management proposal set forth by the National Ecology Institute
and the Federal Coastal Program in 2000 cited the work in Bahía Santa
María as one of the few national examples where ICM has been made
operational. The Xcalak Reefs National Park was among the last designated by the Zedillo administration. It is only the second marine park to
have been initiated by a Mexican community rather than the national
government. The current municipal initiative for coastal management in
Chetumal is proposed as part of a pilot program for decentralized management of the federal coastal zone.
Community-based Xcalak Reefs National Park
In 1995, conservationists in Quintana Roo were actively engaged in the
state’s reef and coastal habitats. A similar effort was underway in Belize,
Mexico’s neighbor to the south. Together, Mexico and Belize shared the
role of protecting the Meso-American Barrier Reef that fringes the
Caribbean coast from Mexico to Honduras. The decline in the fishing
industry in this area had motivated the community of Xcalak to look
elsewhere for its livelihood—in this case, to the possibilities that lay in
tourism. Looking at the tourism industry as it had radiated southward
from Cancun, the Xcalakeños saw tourism both as a promise for economic opportunity and as a threat to their environment. In 1995, the
Xcalak community, in a letter from their fishing cooperative to the federal government, requested help from the ASK, CRC and others to assist
Xcalak in the complicated process of issue identification, visioning,
developing a plan and getting it approved. That letter set off a series of
events that led, five years later, to a ceremony attended by President
Zedillo to dedicate Mexico’s newest national park, Xcalak Reefs National
Park. The park includes 13,340 hectares of coastal waters that include the
reef system and 4,037 hectares of wetlands and lagoons.
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The National Commission of Protected Areas (CONANP) now jointly
manages the park with the Banco De Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve. The
park has received considerable national and international attention
because it is one of the first national parks initiated by a community and
developed in a fully participatory manner. Its visibility helps ensure it
does not become a paper park, as has been the fate of many parks in
Mexico and along the Meso-American Reef corridor. The C3EM project
provided funds to hire a member of the Xcalak community as the first
park ranger. A Park Management Technical Committee has been established and meets regularly. In addition to having community representation, the committee is chaired by the president of the new tourism cooperative. The active participation of the community has permitted institutions such as CONANP, which operates all federal parks, to increase their
commitment to co-management arrangements.
It took four years for Xcalak to win official designation as a national
marine park. During this time, the project engaged the community in
several early actions to practice co-management. Local fishers placed
marker buoys to protect fishing no-take zones, and the fishing cooperative and independent fishers agreed to limit their activities to certain
areas and use only certain gear.
In 1996, concurrent with the marine park development, the Xcalak
Community Committee was formed to develop the park proposal. The
committee has gone on to influence the emergence of new forms of local
participation in development decisions. Some of the committee’s founding members recently established the Xcalak Community Promoters, a
forum formally recognized by the municipality. The women who direct
the forum focused their initial efforts on solid waste, a widely recognized problem with impacts on community health and the environment.
The Xcalak Community Strategy of 1997 provided a clear statement of
how the community would effectively co-manage its natural resources
and improve fisheries protection, community-based tourism, and community character. Five years later, many of the elements of this vision
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were being acted on. Local fishers have received training in English,
birding, and fly-fishing, and have formed an eco-tourism cooperative.
The cooperative signed an agreement with a regional tourism agency,
with hopes that Xcalak tours will be included in the package of cruise
ship excursions from vessels docking in Mahahual, 65 kilometers to the
north.
Within the park, community-based reef monitoring has been initiated.
While preliminary observations in the fisheries no-take zone show
increasing fish populations, additional monitoring is required to ensure
the statistical accuracy of these preliminary observations.
The C3EM project has been successful in obtaining financial support to
fund the Xcalak strategy from a range of donor partners, including
WWF for management plan development, the Summit Foundation for
expansion of community management to Mahahual, the North American
Wetland Conservation Act for environmental education, and the
Japanese Embassy for a research and outreach station in Mahahual.
Integrated bay management program—Bahía Santa María
A pioneering integrated management initiative in Bahía de Santa María,
Sinaloa, has formulated strategies for the conservation and wise use of
the bay’s natural resources. The 285,000-hectare bay and watershed is a
priority site for conservation, as demonstrated by its Ramsar Convention
on the Conservation of Wetlands designation. It is also an important bay
for fisheries and shrimp mariculture. This was the first time in the Gulf
of California region that authorities, community members, and bay users
were brought together to work for an extended period on a coastal
ecosystem not designated as a protected area. Their time was spent identifying issues and preparing action proposals for the coastal ecosystem.
Three unique elements of this process should be noted.
First, the management strategy was developed under the leadership of
CIMEX, which for the first time in the Gulf area was addressing a set of
issues that could not be resolved by proposing a reserve or protected
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area. Second, it may be the first time in Mexican experience where two
coastal municipalities came together to develop a collaborative resource
management strategy. Third, the municipalities played an active role in
the design of a joint implementation mechanism that includes a trust
fund. This will secure and administer funds from local and state government, the private sector and donor institutions. This has given rise to an
expanded bay council comprising bay users, public officials, the education community and local communities.
At the outset, a strong technical team, mainly from UAS and the
Monterrey Technical Institute in Sonora, was assembled to prepare issue
characterizations in Bahía Santa María. Many members of this team had
studied, taught or worked together. They shared a commitment to
coastal conservation and experience working with the economically productive sectors in the coast. Working groups were created within the
Conservation and Development Committee (Comisión para
Conservación y Desarollo, or CCD), a voluntary management committee
established to represent communities, education, resource users and
authorities at the three government levels. Subcommittees were formed
to address five key bay themes, review information and develop action
strategies. A second, parallel effort to solicit community involvement
was led by PRONATURA, a leading national conservation organization
in Mexico. C3EM assisted the program by providing training workshops
and events that introduced coastal management concepts. During these
sessions, the CCD crafted a vision statement and goals with specific targets. This was entitled the “Declaration of Culiacan” and was signed in
October 1999 by 30 municipal, state and federal authorities, as well as
key university and NGO institutions. This served to catalyze intergovernmental support and demonstrated strong stakeholder commitment early in the process.
The Bahía Santa María strategy was reviewed and refined in numerous
public meetings. The CCD’s focus shifted from discussing issues and
preparing documents to building constituencies, providing oversight for
the technical work, and guiding early actions. An important turning
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point was a workshop in May 2001 on “Early Actions” held in the village of La Reforma. The workshop attracted 150 participants, most of
whom were women. This was the first time many local residents were
exposed to the program and the event produced an explosion of effort in
the five coastal communities. The bay strategy was subsequently
expanded to respond to community characteristics, issues, and needs.
The bay strategy supports conservation of priority biodiversity habitats,
while enhancing the economic potential in the region. Early implementation efforts included training in shellfish aquaculture, solid waste cleanup and sanitary disposal, eco-tourism and sport fishing, converting
shrimp by-products into meal, and composting using worm cultivation.
These efforts address the need for supplemental livelihoods. Women,
who have demonstrated a great ability to organize and implement
village-level projects, have been eager participants.
A goal for 2003 was the formation of a para-municipal organization to be
called “Committee for the Conservation and Development of Bahía Santa
María.” This unique organization will be jointly managed by the municipalities of Angostura and Navolato. The associated fund will support
permanent staff and offices in such actions as small-scale production
projects, technical assistance to introduce good aquaculture practices,
and technical assistance on issues posed by dredging and pollution control. The organization will also work to get the bay strategy endorsed by
the state of Sinaloa.
One incentive behind this mobilization is the potential advantage of
using coastal management programs to achieve orderly coastal development of high-value real estate. Such development results in a greater flow
of federal coastal zone concession fees to the municipality. This is the
case with the municipality of Navolato, which is promoting tourism and
residential development in Altata, on a wide barrier spit in the bay just
south of Bahía Santa María. This new growth center will be a major
source of both tourism and population pressure in the region. Events in
Bahía Santa María can inform the process in Altata and provide an
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example of how a council of governments and citizens can unify those
charged with management of the federal zone, protected areas, fisheries,
navigation and freshwater flows.
CIMEX has secured multiple sources of funding for the bay project
including support from 16 local and international institutions, including
a consortium of funders such as USAID, North American Wetlands
Council, Ducks Unlimited, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,
and WWF. It has also secured significant contributions from UAS and
local groups.
TOWARD THE MANAGEMENT OF CHETUMAL BAY
Chetumal Bay is in the extreme southeast of the state of Quintana Roo,
on the Yucatan Peninsula. It is a lagoon of approximately 1,100 square
kilometers. The Rio Hondo, which runs along the border between Belize
and Mexico from its origins in the highlands of Guatemala, discharges
into the lagoon.
Chetumal Bay was selected as the geographic focus area for UQROO following a workshop held at the university in 1997. The bay’s proximity to
the university campus provided UQROO with convenient learning-bydoing ecosystem management opportunities. C3EM’s initial goal was to
build the capacity of UQROO in ICM. UQROO committed to incorporating ICM into its research, teaching, and extension and had engaged students in facilitating policy development and promoting the use of ICM
tools. This work resulted in the formal acceptance in 2002 of an
Integrated Coastal Resources Management Program within UQROO’s
new Natural Resources Management Center.
The situation in Chetumal differed significantly from that of Bahía Santa
María. The latter started at the request of the municipality of Angostura
and gathered momentum when CIMEX prepared a proposal for funding
that matched the priorities of the North American Wetlands Council. In
Bahía Santa María, stakeholder groups as well as authorities at the federal, state and local levels saw the benefits of participating and were
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enthusiastic. In contrast, resource management in Chetumal Bay has
been most closely associated with the Manatee Sanctuary established by
the state government in 1996. The sanctuary covers much of the bay and
its wetlands, but does not address the environmental issues in the Rio
Hondo watershed and the city of Chetumal. Given the absence of an
overarching initiative or clearly defined public process for Chetumal
Bay, the staff from UQROO have focused their efforts on extension work,
especially with the smaller bay communities. UQROO has made
progress in providing knowledge and scientific information about the
bay. This includes developing a GIS Center and supporting the emerging
bay management network.
UQROO’s coastal management group has also contributed to the formation of alliances, most notably the Quintana Roo Integrated Management
Network (Red de Manejo Integrado de Recursos Costeros, or RedMIRC)
and the Citizens Working Group for Chetumal Bay. Through these
alliances, the university works with local organizations on planning and
implementation exercises to conserve and promote wise uses of the bay
region. These groups have enabled UQROO to reach a larger population
of stakeholders. A socioeconomic issues profile, “Our Bay, Our Future,”
captures the priority issues for promoting sustainable development of
the Chetumal Bay area.
WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO PROMOTE GOOD
PRACTICES
“Good practices” are verified techniques and technologies that mitigate
the social and environmental impacts of coastal uses. These practices
may be codified in a regulatory framework. More often, they are used to
encourage firms building coastal developments to think systematically
about how to reduce the “ecological footprint” and long-term impacts of
their operations. Examples of a good practice include the requirement
that hotels be built away from high-risk areas, or that shrimp farms be
operated with careful control of feeds and water pumping.
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In 1998, there was an opportunity to apply good management practices
to the development of the Costa Maya tourism corridor. The debate over
land use proposals provoked an important question about the Costa
Maya development process. Would a regulatory approach encourage
developers investing in Costa Maya tourism projects to avoid needless
environmental damage? A problem was the absence of a clear definition
of “low-impact tourism development” for authorities to follow. A series
of books produced in the U.S. called “Living with the Coast,” combined
with the work of several URI faculty and coastal specialists, became the
basis of a manual for identifying the values and vulnerabilities of the
coastal features of Quintana Roo. The manual offered better ways to
carry out a wide range of small to large-scale development activities.
The resulting Normas Prácticas para el Desarollo Túristica (also published
in English as Guidelines for Low-Impact Tourism Along the Coast of Quintana
Roo [Molina et al., 2001]), provided an entry point to train government
authorities on reviewing environmental impact assessments and developing policy. Over time, the guidebook has been incorporated into the
impact assessment review process and federal guidelines for managing
shorefront development in Quintana Roo. A recent SEMARNAT publication has incorporated much of the text of the original manual and replicated the style of providing information in a useful format to developers.
Some municipalities and developers in the Gulf of California have
expressed interest in creating their own Normas Prácticas as a tool to
communicate the forms of development that best fit within their local
environmental conditions.
The Bahía Santa María program has also provided an opportunity to
introduce the concept of good practices as a way to supplement what
was happening as a result of government regulation in Sinaloa state.
CRC drew upon its mariculture experience in Central America and
leveraged funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to
strengthen partnerships with the mariculture industry in Sinaloa.
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CRC has also brought to bear worldwide information on marina good
practices. Following the announcement of the Nautical Route in the Gulf
of California in 2001, CRC worked with the marina industry within the
Gulf of California to develop codes of conduct and build capacity for
both voluntary and formal adoption of such practices. A marina working
group is being established in La Paz, Baja California Sur to advance
marina good practices in the bay. The group comprises marina owners,
and municipal, state and federal officials. It is staffed by ISLA, a local
NGO. Current efforts include conducting a survey of existing operational practices and siting criteria for establishing new marinas. This
information will influence local planning activities and provide input to
the national marina guidelines. This local process will hopefully be replicated in other Gulf of California harbors as marina activity increases as a
result of government-promoted development programs.
In Mexico, where collective decisionmaking typically does not occur, it is
particularly important to work with the private sector. Community and
private interests need mechanisms to resolve problems through negotiation,
C O N S E RV I N G C R I T I C A L
C O A S TA L E C O S Y S T E M S
IN MEXICO:
C A PA C I T Y B U I L D I N G A N D S T R AT E G I C
I N N O VAT I O N F O R T H E S U S TA I N A B L E
D E V E L O P M E N T O F C O A S TA L
COMMUNITIES AND REGIONS
Donald D. Robadue, Jr.
Pamela Rubinoff
INTRODUCTION
The seven-year (1996 – 2003) program Conserving Critical Coastal
Ecosystems in Mexico (C3EM) was the third country program undertaken during CRMP II. It evolved within a context of rapid development in
Mexico’s coastal growth centers, a strong response to this development
from Mexican and international conservation communities, and important efforts in the 1990s to upgrade Mexico’s institutional framework for
environmental management. During this period, the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) and the conservation community in
Mexico focused primarily on conserving biodiversity and implementing
management plans for formally established protected areas.
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Mexico
Showing the CRMP field sites
USA
USA
MEXICO
SOUTH
AMERICA
Bahía Santa María
Gulf of
California
La Paz
MEXICO
GULF OF
MEXICO
Mexico City
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Costa Maya
Chetumal Bay
and Xcalak
Marine Park
C3EM has been implemented by the Coastal Resources Center (CRC) at
the University of Rhode Island (URI) through a partnership with two
Mexican non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—Amigos de Sian
Ka’an (ASK) and Conservation International/Mexico (CIMEX)—and a
Mexican state university, the University of Quintana Roo (UQROO). The
C3EM program operates in two coastal regions—the southern portion of
the state of Quintana Roo on the east coast and the Gulf of California. In
both regions, the project’s partner organizations lead local conservation
and management efforts.
The opportunity for CRC to work on integrated coastal management
(ICM) in Mexico emerged in 1995. It began when CRC staff completed
the design of a World Bank project to initiate ICM programs on the west
coast in Chiapas, Veracruz and Nayarit to complement investments in
environmentally sound aquaculture. That same year, CRC was asked by
USAID’s Mexico mission to help prepare a much smaller-scale proposal
for the Summit of the Americas initiative of the U.S. State Department to
assist the mission’s conservation partners in Mexico. Although the World
Bank program was eventually cancelled, its design had a significant
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influence upon the USAID initiative, which promoted a participatory
approach to preparing coastal management plans, built upon existing
environmental management tools and featured collaboration with universities and NGOs. The agenda laid out in the World Bank project
design remains relevant a decade later as CRC works to promote aquaculture good practices in Sinaloa, CIMEX works in Nayarit’s Marismas
Nacionales, and USAID targets watersheds and lagoons in Chiapas and
Veracruz.
The interconnectedness of events and agendas is an important element
of the C3EM story. This chapter highlights the context of resource management in Mexico in the 1990s, the successes and challenges facing
C3EM during its implementation from 1996 - 2003, and the results and
lessons learned as of the project close in September 2003.
THE GOVERNANCE CONTEXT FOR COASTAL MANAGEMENT IN
MEXICO
A mix of global, national and local issues in the target regions of the east
and west coasts of Mexico helped shape the design of the C3EM.
National environmental policy and leadership was galvanized in Mexico
by the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and
Development and by Mexico’s adoption in 1988 of its General
Environmental Protection Law. Next, the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
set the stage for Mexico’s 1995 - 2000 environmental program, prepared
by the newly created super-agency SEMARNAP (now SEMARNAT,
Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales—the Environment
Secretariat of Mexico). This marked a period of strong leadership and
the energetic application of such conservation and environmental management tools as protected areas and marine parks, environmental plans
for coastal areas, and enforcement of environmental laws. Important
new measures included the creation of the Mexican Nature Trust (Fondo
Mexicana para la Conservación y Natureleza). This fund supports a variety of site-based conservation projects and has transformed “paper
parks”—i.e. parks that exist on paper but are largely non-functional—
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into an effective conservation tool. The Nature Trust is currently capitalized at about US $58 million, with contributions from the Global
Environmental Facility, the Government of Mexico, USAID and several
private foundations.
In the mid-1990s, coastal management issues were on the national agenda. The environmental agenda included in President Ernesto Zedillo’s
six-year plan (1994 - 2000) called for addressing key problems in the federal coastal zone—a 20-meter-wide strip above the high water mark—
including the need to clarify ownership and establish management
responsibilities along the Mexican coastline. New legislation guided federal agencies in the management of fisheries, wildlife, forests and the
federal coastal zone. Mexico’s coastal zone management program has
subsequently focused on settling title disputes and collecting revenues
from concessions while other federal ministries have worked with their
counterparts at the state level to oversee human settlements, urban planning, navigation, ports and tourism.
About 13.4 million people reside in the coastal region, which spans
approximately 35,000 kilometers and includes 166 municipalities in 17
states. Since 1921, Mexico had a highly centralized government under
the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary
Party), which held power for 80 years. The elections of 2000 marked a
major political transition as the presidency shifted to the Partido Acción
Nacional (National Action Party). Since this change in government,
Mexico’s environmental programs have promoted decentralization and
granted state and municipal agencies greater authority and decisionmaking power. The change has sparked an increasingly vocal struggle over
revenue sharing between the federal government and the states. It has
also created decentralized environmental programs in all three layers
(federal, state and municipal) of government.
In 2003, most coastal states have their own counterparts to the federal
agencies. Environmental affairs and urban development are frequently
combined at the state level. Yet in 1995, at the outset of C3EM, there was
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little coordination or integration either among sectors or among federalstate-municipal lines of command. The struggle among layers of government to create effective decentralization reflects the difficulties of internal reform. However, providing a strong institutional foundation is an
essential precondition for advancing ICM in Mexico.
Mexico has acknowledged the need to expand beyond the federal zone
and establish an ICM framework. In 2000, the National Ecology Institute
published a series of reports that summarized environmental progress
under the Zedillo administration and set out agendas for the future. The
recommendations outlined in the reports reflect a tacit understanding of
the issues that have slowed the country’s attempts at sustainable coastal
development. The C3EM is, in and of itself, a manifestation of the recommendation to “draw more fully on the opportunities for international
cooperation in coastal management.”
KEY COASTAL BIODIVERSITY ISSUES FACING MEXICO IN THE MID1990S
Establishing viable international markets for fisheries products (including farmed shrimp) and building market share in the global tourism
industry are key economic objectives for Mexico. Both industries create
important forces that are changing Mexico’s coasts. USAID, in its 1998 –
2006 biodiversity conservation strategy, promoted ICM as an approach
that could work in concert with its conservation strategies to address the
issues raised by these development pressures.
Tourism
The growth and popularity of Cancun as a vacation resort, and now the
largest city in the state of Quintana Roo, proved that tourism could be
an important engine for economic development. It provides a physical
model for tourism development—one with massive, all-inclusive resort
hotels—as well as a financial model, where initial investments have
ignited a long period of hotel construction and associated activities.
Within just 25 years, the once sleepy village of Cancun has been transformed into a premier resort city of over 300,000 residents and spawned
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a 150-kilometer tourism corridor, the Riviera Maya. This has set the
stage for new plans for a tourism investment program for the southern
Costa Maya—the same region where USAID’s program has promoted
more sustainable forms of coastal management and growth.
Tourism development has not come without costs. While Quintana Roo
captures approximately one-third of Mexico’s total tourism income, economic success is difficult to measure and prompts difficult questions.
Are the benefits distributed fairly to communities and local entrepreneurs alike? To what extent do benefits remain in Mexico as opposed to
being sent abroad to tour companies and international hotel chains?
How are ecosystem services compromised by such intense coastal development and use? The National Tourism Promotion Fund (FONATUR), is
proud of its role in jump-starting the tourism development in Cancun’s
beach zone and the Riviera Maya. However, government and citizens
are now working together to address the uncontrolled secondary
impacts of this growth, and address problems in implementing the local
Environmental Land Management Plan that was adopted in 1994 after
more than 20,000 rooms had been constructed and visitor arrivals had
reached two million per year.
Today, FONATUR continues to promote mass tourism to destinations
throughout Mexico’s coastal zone but it is now promoting a low-impact
alternative to the Cancun style of development. The newest proposal for
the Gulf of California encourages a regional approach to development—
26 marina sites located along a “Nautical Route.” FONATUR’s master
plan for Quintana Roo’s southern Costa Maya calls for a smaller 7,000room tourism destination tied to a cruise ship port. It is important to
note that these and other projects are now being negotiated with politicians, community groups and environmental organizations, who together are helping define a trajectory for sustainable tourism.
Fisheries and aquaculture
A motivating factor for creating marine protected areas in Mexico has
been declining fisheries and biodiversity. Whether it is industrial trawl-
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ing of shrimp in marine waters or increased fishing pressure on coral
reefs and lagoons by artisanal fishers, conflicts are increasing and populations of fish and shellfish are declining. Artisanal fisheries have both
social significance and political influence in the region. There are well
over 11,000 boats in the Sinaloa region alone. Unfortunately there are
few or no regulations on the species harvested.
Economic pressures for growth in aquaculture can be clearly seen in the
Gulf of California, where 16 of the 20 major coastal lagoon ecosystems
have been surveyed for shrimp aquaculture. About 35,700 hectares of
ponds have already been built and there is a potential for 180,000
hectares more. Such a build-out would threaten these coastal ecosystems, which have important wild shrimp fisheries, internationally significant wetlands, and provide important habitats for migrating shore birds
and ducks.
Mexico’s strong concern for the health and good management of its bays
and lagoons is reflected in its Comprehensive Fisheries Policy (Carta
Nacional de Pesca, the National Map of Fisheries Policies) which includes
a characterization, issue diagnosis and recommended actions for all of
Mexico’s important embayments. Nevertheless, weak enforcement and
bureaucratic processes have made management of these areas a
challenge.
Increases in economic investment in the fisheries and tourism sectors
are deeply intertwined with demographic and environmental issues
affecting quality of life in coastal regions. Mexico is using ICM tools to
help address management by integrating environment, economy, and
development. While advances are being made by addressing such
resource management issues, the forces of internal and external change
(globalization) demand major policy shifts and require that political
decisions be made at larger scales.
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PROJECT DESIGN AND OPERATION
While the CRMP II initiatives in Tanzania and Indonesia and the CRMP I
pilot sites in Ecuador, Thailand and Sri Lanka were all government-led
partnerships that addressed ICM at the national level, the C3EM project
was directed at strengthening NGO and university institutions in targeted bio-geographic regions of Mexico. The reason for this focus was simple: Mexican law is sufficient to meet the challenges and its key institutions are already in place. The need is for an increased level of public
participation and sound implementation. Place-based efforts at the community, municipal and bio-regional levels—efforts with high levels of
participation and co-management—are one means for accomplishing
this.
In its first two years, the C3EM was funded at US $2.7 million to achieve
its four key objectives. In the project’s third through fifth years, USAID
increased the scope of work to include the design and oversight of a
field station to match Japanese Embassy funding of the facility in
Mahahual in the state of Quintana Roo. All C3EM partners have a successful history of fundraising and securing institutional funds to match
project income. From the start, the team agreed to seek complementary
projects that would substantially increase the work that could be supported through USAID funding. These efforts generated US $1 million
on each coast.
As an element of the USAID Mexico biodiversity portfolio, C3EM’s purpose was to build the capacity of selected Mexican institutions to effectively support citizen efforts to address the multi-faceted issues affecting
coastal resource condition and use. USAID’s priority in 1996 was to
bring an integrated approach to what it saw as a set of isolated coastal
conservation projects. While Mexico has an enviable legal and administrative framework for environmental policy, there was a growing gap
between stated policy and actual practice. Working through existing
NGOs previously funded by USAID provided a platform to advance
coastal resource governance through strategic points of entry rather than
through a comprehensive national program. Often, small practical
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demonstrations of coordination, cooperation and co-management can
generate the hope and self-confidence needed to build demand for and
capability to carry out programs of greater scope and influence.
The C3EM objectives were to:
1. Make progress in coastal management in areas adjacent to biodiversity conservation sites.
C3EM worked in two ecologically important areas to demonstrate
how coastal management could help conserve critical coastal ecosystems and build NGO and university partner capacity to contribute to
a broader coastal management agenda. The C3EM sites were Xcalak
and its associated coral reef ecosystem within the Meso-American
Reef System; and Bahía Santa María in Sinaloa, a high-priority
coastal wetland ecosystem in the Gulf of California.
2. Promote voluntary measures to mitigate the impacts of development.
C3EM acknowledged that most change in coastal resource use would
need to be voluntary and driven by incentives for individuals and
developers to adjust their activities. Toward this end, the project, in
partnership with private and public stakeholders, focused on developing and applying good practices for tourism and mariculture—
practices that would reduce environmental impacts, promote sustainable businesses and enhance the local distribution of benefits.
3. Improve coastal governance.
The C3EM project addressed the coastal policies affecting the ecosystems of Costa Maya, Chetumal (Quintana Roo), and the Gulf of
California. The project contributed to the state-level coastal land use
ordinances that are Mexico’s primary tool for establishing use priorities in geographic areas. The objective was to strengthen institutions
and policies within the targeted regions and thereby increase the
prospects of success in these strategically selected sites—and then to
replicate this process throughout the region. The C3EM program
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design emphasized participatory methods to establish co-management schemes and sought opportunities to create inter-sectoral coordination mechanisms.
4. Increase local and regional capability to utilize ICM principles and
practices.
C3EM worked to build the capacity of program partners to work
successfully with a diverse group of stakeholders at the community
and regional levels to support the first three objectives. The project
recognized that in order for participatory processes, coastal planning
and decisionmaking, or the design and adoption of good practices to
succeed, all three layers of Mexican government—local, regional, and
national—had to be actively engaged.
Two conditions sparked the selection of Xcalak and Costa Maya as sites
requiring “improved management.” One was the announcement by government of plans to develop tourism along the coast of this region.
Another was the request from community members to create a marine
park and promote eco-tourism. The C3EM goal was to help Xcalak and
the Costa Maya as a whole to move from a threatened environmental
status to one in which ecosystem quality was healthy and coastal management capability was robust. To accomplish this, C3EM proposed
using a learning-based approach.
In both the Costa Maya and Gulf of California sites, measurement of
progress towards improved management was the main indicator reported annually to USAID. Advances in site management were tracked by a
scorecard, adapted in part from the Mexico Parks in Peril program and
the Regional Environmental Program for Central America (PROARCA).
This scorecard mirrored the ICM policy cycle. (See Chapter 1.)
Step 1: Local problems identified and a shared vision prepared
Step 2: Local action plans and strategy initiated
Step 3: Local action plan approved
Step 4: Local action plans implemented
Step 5: Evaluation (addressing performance gaps) conducted
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Other indicators tracked specific changes in behavior in coastal resource
use and progress in policy and capacity development.
The following pages share insights into C3EM strategies to achieve its
goals and highlight both its successful and less successful efforts. Seven
years of collaboration to improve Mexico’s evolving ecosystem and land
use governance system have provided CRMP II and its partners with a
broader understanding of both the bottlenecks and the opportunities for
reform, progress and growth of ICM as an important tool for sustainable
development.
STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING RESULTS
The intended strategies for each result of the C3EM program describe the
initial choices on direction and use of project resources. Some of these
choices changed during the course of the program in reaction either to
internal changes in the project and its partners, or to external changes in
the issues and opportunities in the program areas. This reflects the learning-based approach that characterized the CRMP.
Strategies for formally adopting coastal management plans and selecting
implementation actions along southern Xcalak Peninsula and Bahía Santa
María
In both Quintana Roo and the Gulf of California, local successes have
helped advance coastal management at all levels. It is the work implemented at the site level that creates concentrated effort and enthusiasm,
and provides tangible evidence of the practical outputs and outcomes
that can result from the investments of time, energy and money that go
into studies, discussion and consensus building. Mexico has a labyrinth
of area plans, impact assessment procedures and regulatory criteria—
none of which converge at the scale of a coastal ecosystem and most of
which have little credibility at the local level. This systems begs for an
alternative approach that can demonstrate and then generate support for
planning methods that cross jurisdictions and that unify stakeholders.
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Such an approach would ensure sustained efforts that transcend
administrations and have sustainable funding and a vibrant constituency.
However, without a focus on what local people perceive as priority
issues and a commitment to participation, otherwise logical and robust
environmental planning can degrade into the tedious formality of
preparing environmental master plans at different scales. For example,
combining bay and land area decisionmaking—an idea only vaguely
referred to in national law—became real and exciting when tested on the
ground in both Quintana Roo and Sinaloa.
Moving from planning to implementation in Mexico means breathing
new life into existing instruments. Currently, municipal and state-adopted environmental ordinances and a federal environmental regulation
system that oversees coastal decisionmaking are Mexico’s principal
coastal environmental management tools. C3EM’s three strategic partners worked at revitalizing these instruments from different
perspectives.
Closing the gap between planning and implementation meant pursuing
practical projects with good chances of producing early and tangible success at various levels. In C3EM, this included implementing specific
problem-solving exercises in villages, experimenting with private enterprises to take advantage of conservation successes, reshaping legal procedures so as to engage resource users, and providing a support network
to working groups. Early actions in Xcalak and Bahía Santa María were
especially effective in building stakeholder confidence and providing a
practical exercise for advancing local management while waiting for formal mechanisms to be put in place.
Strategies for defining low-impact practices for environmentally compatible
coastal development and promoting their use by private developers and
regulatory agencies
C3EM strategic partners initially worked in sites where biodiversity was
the primary concern. As programs on both coasts unfolded, partners also
responded to the need to address social and economic development, and
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the public health dimensions of environmental problems. These added
dimensions were introduced through training events and support for
business planning and supplemental livelihoods. The program has been
diligent in incorporating private sector and community viewpoints on
good conservation practices. It has addressed the incentives and disincentives for implementing policies and good practices.
Strategies for developing policy options for government
Coastal management is a relatively new idea in Mexico. One of its
underlying foundations is the co-management of natural resources and
public goods. In co-management, both government and users of common property resources take responsibility for good decisionmaking and
make credible commitments to carry out these decisions. In Mexico,
however, federal government holds the authority for most decisions on
coastal and marine waters and resources. Nevertheless, co-management
arrangements do work when appropriately staffed, funded and backed
by enforcement agencies and the judicial system.
The best known example of a co-management arrangement is the pioneering work in the 1980s which led to major policy change in tropical
forestry management in Quintana Roo and the establishment of the Sian
Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. Forests held by ejidos (communities that own
land in common) are now managed collaboratively with government
authorities through an array of agreements that leaves management
largely in the hands of the resource owners. This was a dramatic reversal
in federal and state policy toward forest resources—from a situation
where forest concessions were issued top down, to a situation where,
today, ejidos have full control and make consensus-based decisions within the context of a statewide integrated decision process.
As a result, rampant deforestation and uncontrolled expansion of cattle
ranching has been halted. ASK, a C3EM lead partner, played an important role in this process. More recently UQROO has been involved in
implementation and analysis of the co-management arrangements. There
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were both progress and pitfalls in the co-management strategy in forests
and coastal land protection in the biosphere reserve, with periods of
progress interspersed with periods of “one step forward, two steps
back.”
The C3EM program draws much from the spirit and ideas of this
forestry experience. This “inheritance,” however, was not fully recognized or appreciated at the outset of this project as team members and
partners viewed forests and coasts as two separate realms. Nevertheless,
the C3EM program and its partners have encountered and tested a wide
range of these co-management situations, and have promoted making
them a component of Mexico’s ICM “tool box.”
Regional or national levels of government must support local tests of comanagement practices and agreements. This is often referred to as a
“two-track” approach where concurrent efforts occur at local and national levels. However, the C3EM strategy used a different approach. Only
after testing local efforts and as the learning and the team matured did it
scale-up to regional efforts. The hope was that as local efforts were
proven successful, leaders in other local sites would hear about these
and adapt the approach to their own issues. Regional or national governments also began to discover their roles in supporting implementation of
policies and programs through such local action. CRC played an important role in this process as well. Since the projects on the two coasts operated relatively independently from each other, cross-program exchange
was difficult. CRC, however, played a facilitator role serving as a conduit
for ideas and insights between both regions and helping to spread the
word to other sites.
Strategies for improving capacity of the C3EM partners in site management and
low-impact development practices
The sheer size of Mexico’s coastal zone combined with the biodiversity
focus of the USAID Mexico mission created a unique situation and challenge to the CRC Mexico team. With a small budget, C3EM aimed to
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make a difference in some fraction of the 35,000 kilometers of coast. This
challenge was exacerbated by the high cost of doing business in Mexico.
On the positive side, there were a number of encouraging factors.
Mexico has a high level of technical capability within the academic,
research, and NGO communities in its 17 coastal states. Many faculty
and technical staff in civic associations, including CRMP II’s strategic
partners, were trained in the U.S. at the Master’s or Ph.D. level. The
Mexican government is relatively stable. Furthermore, international
donor programs concerned about biodiversity conservation, including
USAID, have invested in building the capacity of civic society in advocacy, effective participation in public policy and decisionmaking, and the
design and implementation of co-management arrangements.
An important part of the C3EM approach was the definition of roles of
the project team members. Most C3EM tasks were integrated into larger
programs initiated and led by CRC’s partners. The partners assumed the
lead role in interactions with local authorities and other groups. For its
part, CRC brought to the C3EM program a broader perspective drawn
from its international contacts and experience. The presence of a respected outside organization such as CRC can help partners overcome the
phenomenon that “no one is a prophet in his own land” by verifying,
validating and reinforcing work which the partners were already well
able to carry out themselves.
At the start of C3EM, all partners had well-trained and technically qualified staff and consultants to help carry out biodiversity conservation.
The tendency in the mid-1990s, however, was to emphasize scientific
and technical expertise over advocacy. Process skills—skills in building
constituencies and in negotiating and implementing successful co-management agreements—however, are essential to ICM and these skills
were weak. Partner organizations recognized that their staff had little
experience working with community groups, the private sector, or
engaging government agencies in a non-adversarial manner. Some had
little experience collaborating with other NGOs or universities. CRMP II
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assisted partners in convening multi-stakeholder panels, committees and
organizations that could lead to establishing ICM programs robust
enough to endure the three-year cycle of staff turnover and political
change at the local level. The USAID annual workplan requirements and
semi-annual reporting became a team-building effort, and a time to periodically assess and adapt the program.
Initial efforts in Quintana Roo did not involve UQROO. This was primarily because UQROO was not an NGO and had no prior relationship
with the USAID mission. Yet, UQROO was attractive as a potential collaborator. It had an emerging role as sponsor of conferences and workshops. It had helped prepare, at the state level, the Costa Maya environmental ordinance. It had an active social forestry program. And, it had a
supportive rector. An agreement was negotiated with the university in
1998 as the second phase of C3EM was being implemented. Adding
UQROO to the C3EM team meant a significant increase in research and
outreach capacity. UQROO was interested in strengthening its own educational curriculum—improving experiential learning for students and
enhancing outreach programs—to encompass coastal management
themes. The university partnership expanded significantly when USAID
formalized its university partnership program between Mexico and the
U.S. This partnership program provided needed resources for UQROO
to establish a Global Information Systems (GIS) Center and initiate a
master’s degree in environmental planning. CRC’s colleagues at URI
worked with UQROO to consolidate university and research institutions
in the Yucatan Peninsula (eight in total) and increase the effectiveness for
data development and distribution. Similarly, URI and UQROO, and
members of a consortium of universities in the Gulf of Mexico and
Caribbean, collaborated in promoting regional ICM programs.
Another important partnership was with the Autonomas University of
Sinaloa (UAS) in the Gulf of California. UAS has provided important
technical and logistical support through its involvement in the Bahía
Santa María program. The university has contributed to a strong technical and extension program for Bahía Santa María. UAS is widely respect-
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ed by participants in the process for its continuing contribution to both
scientific understanding and outreach to bay user groups.
PROGRESS, OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS
The C3EM project has provided Mexico with important positive experiences and innovations in coastal resource management. The national
coastal management proposal set forth by the National Ecology Institute
and the Federal Coastal Program in 2000 cited the work in Bahía Santa
María as one of the few national examples where ICM has been made
operational. The Xcalak Reefs National Park was among the last designated by the Zedillo administration. It is only the second marine park to
have been initiated by a Mexican community rather than the national
government. The current municipal initiative for coastal management in
Chetumal is proposed as part of a pilot program for decentralized management of the federal coastal zone.
Community-based Xcalak Reefs National Park
In 1995, conservationists in Quintana Roo were actively engaged in the
state’s reef and coastal habitats. A similar effort was underway in Belize,
Mexico’s neighbor to the south. Together, Mexico and Belize shared the
role of protecting the Meso-American Barrier Reef that fringes the
Caribbean coast from Mexico to Honduras. The decline in the fishing
industry in this area had motivated the community of Xcalak to look
elsewhere for its livelihood—in this case, to the possibilities that lay in
tourism. Looking at the tourism industry as it had radiated southward
from Cancun, the Xcalakeños saw tourism both as a promise for economic opportunity and as a threat to their environment. In 1995, the
Xcalak community, in a letter from their fishing cooperative to the federal government, requested help from the ASK, CRC and others to assist
Xcalak in the complicated process of issue identification, visioning,
developing a plan and getting it approved. That letter set off a series of
events that led, five years later, to a ceremony attended by President
Zedillo to dedicate Mexico’s newest national park, Xcalak Reefs National
Park. The park includes 13,340 hectares of coastal waters that include the
reef system and 4,037 hectares of wetlands and lagoons.
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The National Commission of Protected Areas (CONANP) now jointly
manages the park with the Banco De Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve. The
park has received considerable national and international attention
because it is one of the first national parks initiated by a community and
developed in a fully participatory manner. Its visibility helps ensure it
does not become a paper park, as has been the fate of many parks in
Mexico and along the Meso-American Reef corridor. The C3EM project
provided funds to hire a member of the Xcalak community as the first
park ranger. A Park Management Technical Committee has been established and meets regularly. In addition to having community representation, the committee is chaired by the president of the new tourism cooperative. The active participation of the community has permitted institutions such as CONANP, which operates all federal parks, to increase their
commitment to co-management arrangements.
It took four years for Xcalak to win official designation as a national
marine park. During this time, the project engaged the community in
several early actions to practice co-management. Local fishers placed
marker buoys to protect fishing no-take zones, and the fishing cooperative and independent fishers agreed to limit their activities to certain
areas and use only certain gear.
In 1996, concurrent with the marine park development, the Xcalak
Community Committee was formed to develop the park proposal. The
committee has gone on to influence the emergence of new forms of local
participation in development decisions. Some of the committee’s founding members recently established the Xcalak Community Promoters, a
forum formally recognized by the municipality. The women who direct
the forum focused their initial efforts on solid waste, a widely recognized problem with impacts on community health and the environment.
The Xcalak Community Strategy of 1997 provided a clear statement of
how the community would effectively co-manage its natural resources
and improve fisheries protection, community-based tourism, and community character. Five years later, many of the elements of this vision
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were being acted on. Local fishers have received training in English,
birding, and fly-fishing, and have formed an eco-tourism cooperative.
The cooperative signed an agreement with a regional tourism agency,
with hopes that Xcalak tours will be included in the package of cruise
ship excursions from vessels docking in Mahahual, 65 kilometers to the
north.
Within the park, community-based reef monitoring has been initiated.
While preliminary observations in the fisheries no-take zone show
increasing fish populations, additional monitoring is required to ensure
the statistical accuracy of these preliminary observations.
The C3EM project has been successful in obtaining financial support to
fund the Xcalak strategy from a range of donor partners, including
WWF for management plan development, the Summit Foundation for
expansion of community management to Mahahual, the North American
Wetland Conservation Act for environmental education, and the
Japanese Embassy for a research and outreach station in Mahahual.
Integrated bay management program—Bahía Santa María
A pioneering integrated management initiative in Bahía de Santa María,
Sinaloa, has formulated strategies for the conservation and wise use of
the bay’s natural resources. The 285,000-hectare bay and watershed is a
priority site for conservation, as demonstrated by its Ramsar Convention
on the Conservation of Wetlands designation. It is also an important bay
for fisheries and shrimp mariculture. This was the first time in the Gulf
of California region that authorities, community members, and bay users
were brought together to work for an extended period on a coastal
ecosystem not designated as a protected area. Their time was spent identifying issues and preparing action proposals for the coastal ecosystem.
Three unique elements of this process should be noted.
First, the management strategy was developed under the leadership of
CIMEX, which for the first time in the Gulf area was addressing a set of
issues that could not be resolved by proposing a reserve or protected
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area. Second, it may be the first time in Mexican experience where two
coastal municipalities came together to develop a collaborative resource
management strategy. Third, the municipalities played an active role in
the design of a joint implementation mechanism that includes a trust
fund. This will secure and administer funds from local and state government, the private sector and donor institutions. This has given rise to an
expanded bay council comprising bay users, public officials, the education community and local communities.
At the outset, a strong technical team, mainly from UAS and the
Monterrey Technical Institute in Sonora, was assembled to prepare issue
characterizations in Bahía Santa María. Many members of this team had
studied, taught or worked together. They shared a commitment to
coastal conservation and experience working with the economically productive sectors in the coast. Working groups were created within the
Conservation and Development Committee (Comisión para
Conservación y Desarollo, or CCD), a voluntary management committee
established to represent communities, education, resource users and
authorities at the three government levels. Subcommittees were formed
to address five key bay themes, review information and develop action
strategies. A second, parallel effort to solicit community involvement
was led by PRONATURA, a leading national conservation organization
in Mexico. C3EM assisted the program by providing training workshops
and events that introduced coastal management concepts. During these
sessions, the CCD crafted a vision statement and goals with specific targets. This was entitled the “Declaration of Culiacan” and was signed in
October 1999 by 30 municipal, state and federal authorities, as well as
key university and NGO institutions. This served to catalyze intergovernmental support and demonstrated strong stakeholder commitment early in the process.
The Bahía Santa María strategy was reviewed and refined in numerous
public meetings. The CCD’s focus shifted from discussing issues and
preparing documents to building constituencies, providing oversight for
the technical work, and guiding early actions. An important turning
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point was a workshop in May 2001 on “Early Actions” held in the village of La Reforma. The workshop attracted 150 participants, most of
whom were women. This was the first time many local residents were
exposed to the program and the event produced an explosion of effort in
the five coastal communities. The bay strategy was subsequently
expanded to respond to community characteristics, issues, and needs.
The bay strategy supports conservation of priority biodiversity habitats,
while enhancing the economic potential in the region. Early implementation efforts included training in shellfish aquaculture, solid waste cleanup and sanitary disposal, eco-tourism and sport fishing, converting
shrimp by-products into meal, and composting using worm cultivation.
These efforts address the need for supplemental livelihoods. Women,
who have demonstrated a great ability to organize and implement
village-level projects, have been eager participants.
A goal for 2003 was the formation of a para-municipal organization to be
called “Committee for the Conservation and Development of Bahía Santa
María.” This unique organization will be jointly managed by the municipalities of Angostura and Navolato. The associated fund will support
permanent staff and offices in such actions as small-scale production
projects, technical assistance to introduce good aquaculture practices,
and technical assistance on issues posed by dredging and pollution control. The organization will also work to get the bay strategy endorsed by
the state of Sinaloa.
One incentive behind this mobilization is the potential advantage of
using coastal management programs to achieve orderly coastal development of high-value real estate. Such development results in a greater flow
of federal coastal zone concession fees to the municipality. This is the
case with the municipality of Navolato, which is promoting tourism and
residential development in Altata, on a wide barrier spit in the bay just
south of Bahía Santa María. This new growth center will be a major
source of both tourism and population pressure in the region. Events in
Bahía Santa María can inform the process in Altata and provide an
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example of how a council of governments and citizens can unify those
charged with management of the federal zone, protected areas, fisheries,
navigation and freshwater flows.
CIMEX has secured multiple sources of funding for the bay project
including support from 16 local and international institutions, including
a consortium of funders such as USAID, North American Wetlands
Council, Ducks Unlimited, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,
and WWF. It has also secured significant contributions from UAS and
local groups.
TOWARD THE MANAGEMENT OF CHETUMAL BAY
Chetumal Bay is in the extreme southeast of the state of Quintana Roo,
on the Yucatan Peninsula. It is a lagoon of approximately 1,100 square
kilometers. The Rio Hondo, which runs along the border between Belize
and Mexico from its origins in the highlands of Guatemala, discharges
into the lagoon.
Chetumal Bay was selected as the geographic focus area for UQROO following a workshop held at the university in 1997. The bay’s proximity to
the university campus provided UQROO with convenient learning-bydoing ecosystem management opportunities. C3EM’s initial goal was to
build the capacity of UQROO in ICM. UQROO committed to incorporating ICM into its research, teaching, and extension and had engaged students in facilitating policy development and promoting the use of ICM
tools. This work resulted in the formal acceptance in 2002 of an
Integrated Coastal Resources Management Program within UQROO’s
new Natural Resources Management Center.
The situation in Chetumal differed significantly from that of Bahía Santa
María. The latter started at the request of the municipality of Angostura
and gathered momentum when CIMEX prepared a proposal for funding
that matched the priorities of the North American Wetlands Council. In
Bahía Santa María, stakeholder groups as well as authorities at the federal, state and local levels saw the benefits of participating and were
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enthusiastic. In contrast, resource management in Chetumal Bay has
been most closely associated with the Manatee Sanctuary established by
the state government in 1996. The sanctuary covers much of the bay and
its wetlands, but does not address the environmental issues in the Rio
Hondo watershed and the city of Chetumal. Given the absence of an
overarching initiative or clearly defined public process for Chetumal
Bay, the staff from UQROO have focused their efforts on extension work,
especially with the smaller bay communities. UQROO has made
progress in providing knowledge and scientific information about the
bay. This includes developing a GIS Center and supporting the emerging
bay management network.
UQROO’s coastal management group has also contributed to the formation of alliances, most notably the Quintana Roo Integrated Management
Network (Red de Manejo Integrado de Recursos Costeros, or RedMIRC)
and the Citizens Working Group for Chetumal Bay. Through these
alliances, the university works with local organizations on planning and
implementation exercises to conserve and promote wise uses of the bay
region. These groups have enabled UQROO to reach a larger population
of stakeholders. A socioeconomic issues profile, “Our Bay, Our Future,”
captures the priority issues for promoting sustainable development of
the Chetumal Bay area.
WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO PROMOTE GOOD
PRACTICES
“Good practices” are verified techniques and technologies that mitigate
the social and environmental impacts of coastal uses. These practices
may be codified in a regulatory framework. More often, they are used to
encourage firms building coastal developments to think systematically
about how to reduce the “ecological footprint” and long-term impacts of
their operations. Examples of a good practice include the requirement
that hotels be built away from high-risk areas, or that shrimp farms be
operated with careful control of feeds and water pumping.
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In 1998, there was an opportunity to apply good management practices
to the development of the Costa Maya tourism corridor. The debate over
land use proposals provoked an important question about the Costa
Maya development process. Would a regulatory approach encourage
developers investing in Costa Maya tourism projects to avoid needless
environmental damage? A problem was the absence of a clear definition
of “low-impact tourism development” for authorities to follow. A series
of books produced in the U.S. called “Living with the Coast,” combined
with the work of several URI faculty and coastal specialists, became the
basis of a manual for identifying the values and vulnerabilities of the
coastal features of Quintana Roo. The manual offered better ways to
carry out a wide range of small to large-scale development activities.
The resulting Normas Prácticas para el Desarollo Túristica (also published
in English as Guidelines for Low-Impact Tourism Along the Coast of Quintana
Roo [Molina et al., 2001]), provided an entry point to train government
authorities on reviewing environmental impact assessments and developing policy. Over time, the guidebook has been incorporated into the
impact assessment review process and federal guidelines for managing
shorefront development in Quintana Roo. A recent SEMARNAT publication has incorporated much of the text of the original manual and replicated the style of providing information in a useful format to developers.
Some municipalities and developers in the Gulf of California have
expressed interest in creating their own Normas Prácticas as a tool to
communicate the forms of development that best fit within their local
environmental conditions.
The Bahía Santa María program has also provided an opportunity to
introduce the concept of good practices as a way to supplement what
was happening as a result of government regulation in Sinaloa state.
CRC drew upon its mariculture experience in Central America and
leveraged funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to
strengthen partnerships with the mariculture industry in Sinaloa.
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CRC has also brought to bear worldwide information on marina good
practices. Following the announcement of the Nautical Route in the Gulf
of California in 2001, CRC worked with the marina industry within the
Gulf of California to develop codes of conduct and build capacity for
both voluntary and formal adoption of such practices. A marina working
group is being established in La Paz, Baja California Sur to advance
marina good practices in the bay. The group comprises marina owners,
and municipal, state and federal officials. It is staffed by ISLA, a local
NGO. Current efforts include conducting a survey of existing operational practices and siting criteria for establishing new marinas. This
information will influence local planning activities and provide input to
the national marina guidelines. This local process will hopefully be replicated in other Gulf of California harbors as marina activity increases as a
result of government-promoted development programs.
In Mexico, where collective decisionmaking typically does not occur, it is
particularly important to work with the private sector. Community and
private interests need mechanisms to resolve problems through negotiation,